Survivor of ’63 Ala. Church Bombing Seeks Funds

The lone survivor of a 1963 Alabama church bombing that killed four black girls said Wednesday she wants millions in compensation for her injuries and won’t accept a top congressional award proposed to honor the victims.

Sarah Collins Rudolph, in an interview with The Associated Press, said she feels forgotten 50 years after the blast shocked the nation. Rudolph lost an eye in the Sept. 16, 1963 bombing at Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and says she never got restitution.

“We haven’t received anything, and I lost an eye,” said Rudolph, who lives north of Birmingham. “They just want to throw a medal at us.”

Congress is considering whether to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the four girls who died: 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, and 11-year-old Denise McNair. Addie Mae was the sister of Rudolph, who was 12 at the time and among the many who were injured.

The brother of Wesley said he isn’t interested in the award either and wants compensation, partly because history didn’t even record his sister’s name correctly.

U.S. Reps. Terri Sewell, a Democrat, and Spencer Bachus, a Republican, announced a bipartisan effort in January to award the medal to the church bombing victims. The medal represents the highest civilian honor that Congress can bestow. Recipients have ranged from George Washington to civil rights figure Rosa Parks, Pope John Paul II and “Peanuts’ creator Charles M. Schulz.